14 Methods to Enhance Web page View and Scale back Your Bounce Fee

It certain is irritating if you put a lot exhausting work into your WordPress web site, solely to be confronted with dwindling customer time spent on web site and excessive bounce charges.

Even when your web site site visitors and engagement is fairly good, it takes some actual work and experimentation to determine easy methods to encourage extra guests to remain in your web site longer than just a few seconds and truly click on round and take a look at extra pages earlier than closing the tab or hitting the again button.

There’s no one-size-fits-all resolution, and it’s not about to get any simpler, both. The human consideration span has now dropped to only eight seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. Which implies, during the last 20 years, our consideration span has really fallen beneath that of a goldfish―the long-standing measure of being simply distracted!

In case you can’t persuade guests in that period of time (or much less) that your content material is of worth to them, the additional web page views you hoped to get from further hyperlink clicking, social shares, and repeat visits will most actually endure.

With all that in thoughts, we’ll supply some sensible recommendation on this publish that may assist you to maximize these all-important web page views in your web site.

Earlier than You Do Something
Responsive Design
Fastened Navigation
Fastened Sidebar (Components)
Floating Social Share Buttons
Collect Clues from Your Bounce Fee
Match Customer Expectations
Give Guests Extra Related Stuff to Click on On
Use a Good website positioning Plugin like SmartCrawl
Break up Lengthy Posts by Utilizing the Web page-Hyperlink Tag
Insert Related and Associated Hyperlinks within the Proper Locations
Interlink Your Posts
Use Your Sidebar to Characteristic Common Content material
Create a Compelling Class Menu
Use Excerpts

Earlier than You Do Something

You may promote your web site and attempt to rack up extra web page views till the cows come residence, however none of that point or vitality spent will carry you the most effective outcomes in case your content material is junk and your design creates extra confusion than enticement. It’s time to get sincere with your self and ask whether or not your guests might discover the identical data elsewhere or whether or not your theme might use some critical updating.

If you wish to get critical about web page views, it is best to look into testing how briskly your web site masses. Guests anticipate your web site to load in two seconds or much less, in order that’s what you need to be aiming for. Use a plugin like our very personal Hummingbird to assist pace up the loading time of your web site. Additionally, try this information: The Final Mega Information to Rushing Up WordPress.

Caching plugins can pace up the loading time of your web site.

Bought these important issues down? Good. Listed here are some extra particular suggestions, plus associated instruments and plugins you’ll be able to make the most of to assist ramp up these web page view stats.

1. Responsive Design

You nearly actually already understand how essential responsive design is, so it nearly feels redundant to say it right here. Nonetheless, there’s a distinction between recognizing the significance of responsive design, and truly having a extremely usable responsive design in your WordPress web site.

My recommendation right here is straightforward: In case your web site isn’t extremely usable throughout nearly all of units that your viewers makes use of, it’s not responsive “sufficient.” As a result of that’s the factor about responsiveness – it exists on a spectrum. It’s not a case of your web site being ‘responsive’ or ‘unresponsive’ – it’s about how rigorously designed your theme is for its objective.

You will discover out which units your viewers primarily makes use of in Google Analytics, below Viewers > Cellular > Gadgets:

Google Analytics cellular units reporting.

Within the above instance, you’ll be able to see that the overwhelming majority of cellular guests to the positioning use Apple units (iPhone and iPad). The subsequent hottest gadget (after ‘not set’) is the Google Nexus 5. Below these circumstances, it might be cheap to check your web site on the iPad and iPhone. How far down the rabbit gap you go is completely as much as you.

I’m not going to delve into the trivialities of thorough usability testing for cellular units. As an alternative, we’ll deal with the intuitive: Does your web site really feel simple to browse in your chosen cellular units? In case you can rope a good friend or member of the family into this (particularly if they haven’t seen your web site earlier than), all the higher.

In case you personal the units mostly used in your web site, then you’ll be able to after all navigate to the positioning and check it your self. Nonetheless, when you don’t, I like to recommend MobileTest.me and StudioPress’ responsive testing instrument. That is fairly badass too.

2. Fastened Navigation

This usability characteristic does precisely what it says on the tin: As an alternative of the highest navigation bar disappearing if you scroll, it stays ‘mounted’ on the prime of your display.

We make the most of a hard and fast navigation menu right here on WPMU DEV. As a result of we’re superior.

Fastened navigation may be great for usability as a result of it ensures that guests have instantaneous entry always to (what ought to be) a very powerful hyperlinks in your web site.

From a cellular perspective, when you do use mounted navigation, you could make completely certain that it doesn’t ‘take over’ the display on smaller units. Discuss with the responsive design part above for instruments to check your web site’s design on cellular units to make sure that this isn’t the case.

So how do you implement a hard and fast navigation bar in your web site?

It relies upon. Many WordPress themes supply mounted navigation as customary, however to restrict your theme selections to this alone just isn’t actually sensible.

Thankfully, as is so usually the case, free WordPress plugins come to the rescue. We’re spoilt for alternative right here, with two highly-rated choices accessible for obtain from WordPress.org: myStickymenu, and Sticky Menu (or Something!) on Scroll.

Every of those plugins has their very own idiosyncrasies and variations in performance, so take the time to contemplate them fastidiously.

3. Fastened Sidebar (Components)

Given the earlier merchandise, you’ll be able to little doubt guess what a hard and fast sidebar does. For my part, it has maybe much less impression by way of net usability than a hard and fast navigation bar, however can nonetheless be extremely helpful if you wish to (for instance) draw consideration to a very essential component in your web site.

Please notice that I embrace the phrase “Components” above with good purpose – it could usually be more practical to freeze a selected component of your sidebar, quite than the whole factor.

Discovering an answer that works in your specific theme could also be a problem, however my two suggestions are the aforementioned Sticky Menu plugin, together with Fastened Widget and Sticky Components for WordPress.

Fastened Widget and Sticky Components for WordPress plugin

4. Floating Social Share Buttons

You’ve nearly actually seen floating social share buttons.

You may see the social buttons within the navigation bar so they’re continuously seen.

Floating social sharing buttons can even usually seem alongside the content material, though that implementation isn’t as common because it as soon as was. A part of me needs to say that it’s so 2014, however I’m English, and we’re far too stiff-upper-lip to speak like that. Every to their very own, and personally talking, I nonetheless assume there’s a spot for floating social share buttons.

One stumbling block to concentrate on with floating social share buttons is their look on cellular units. Do they disappear altogether, and in that case, how can the consumer simply alternatively share from their gadget? From a usability perspective, these are questions you could reply. If floating social share buttons do disappear, you have to incorporate an easy-to-use alternative for cellular customers.

So how will you implement floating social share buttons in your WordPress web site? A plugin like our very personal Hustle will do the trick, naturally (and totally free!).

5. Collect Clues from Your Bounce Fee

Right here’s Avinash Kaushik’s definition of bounce charge: “I got here, I noticed, Yuck, I’m out of right here.”

The Google Digital Advertising and marketing Evangelist’s phrases refer to single-page visits which can be adopted by no further motion aside from leaving the positioning completely. In case you’re utilizing Google Analytics to trace your site visitors stats, you’ll find your bounce charge by navigating to Conduct > Web site Content material > All Pages. You’ll be capable to discover the bounce charge for every of your web site’s pages by wanting on the desk on this web page.

With out getting terribly particular, an general bounce charge of 41–55% is about common whereas 26–40% is great. Since Google interprets the time spent on a web page and the bounce charge by wanting on the time between web site entry and final web page view, actual stats could also be off a bit.

The pages with the best bounce charges will let what it is best to actually be focusing your investigative work on. Generally, customers bounce for 2 foremost causes – both:

The web page didn’t serve their expectations, or
It did, however they merely didn’t discover the rest related sufficient to click on on.

So, to assist fight excessive bounce charges, make sure to…

6. Match Customer Expectations

This goes again to creating certain that your content material is great. Even when you assume it already is, there’s nonetheless room for optimization.

Right here’s a bunch of questions you’ll be able to ask your self:

Might high-bouncing pages use some up to date details or analysis?
Are pages too ‘skinny’?
Might the formatting be higher?
Might any photographs or movies be added?
Do they actually serve to tell the customer in regards to the key phrase phrase it is perhaps rating for in Google?
Might the title tags and meta descriptions be improved?

The extra happy your guests are with what you give them, the upper the probabilities they’ll be satisfied that your web site is price exploring by clicking on different pages or posts for extra invaluable data.

7. Give Guests Extra Related Stuff to Click on On

There’s an enormous distinction between a web site that’s been plastered with ineffective hyperlinks and a web site that cleverly locations hyperlinks to circulation properly and leads the customer via a collection of helpful pages based mostly on the place they began.

Listed here are just a few concepts:

Break up prolonged posts right into a collection.
Present related inside hyperlinks inside your content material.
Characteristic common posts inside your sidebar or on the backside of posts.
Categorize and tag your posts in a value-added method, then hyperlink to these classes and tags
Make good use of excerpts.

8. Use a Good website positioning Plugin like SmartCrawl

Probably the most pure manner you may get extra web page views is by rating in the major search engines – simply by having nice content material that’s optimized for key phrase phrases. With a lot competitors nowadays although, it’s simpler stated than completed. Nonetheless, having a stable and respected website positioning plugin might help. Our very personal free plugin SmartCrawl is the most effective you should utilize to get proper all the way down to the nitty-gritty (even when we do say so ourselves!).

She runs website positioning checkups and studies again, giving suggestions to enhance your website positioning. Not solely that, however she additionally permits you to add a customized title and meta descriptions, can allow 301 redirects, combine with Moz website positioning instruments, and rather more.

9. Break up Lengthy Posts by Utilizing the Web page-Hyperlink Tag

In case you frequently publish lengthy articles, a easy solution to improve web page views is to break them up into two or extra separate posts, then use the Web page-Hyperlink Tag by typing <!—nextpage–> on the finish of the publish pages that circulation into the others (whereas in textual content editor mode). This may create numbered pages on the finish of the publish web page, informing the customer to click on to the subsequent web page to proceed studying.

A phrase of warning: Guests don’t precisely like to hold clicking via to extra pages with a view to see extra content material that might’ve simply been placed on one web page, so take into account experimenting with how your guests work together with it. And when you plan on rating properly in search, keep in mind that Google tends to favor pages with extra content material to them.

10. Insert Related and Associated Hyperlinks within the Proper Locations

Including hyperlinks inside the content material is an efficient solution to give guests the chance to be taught extra a couple of matter or piece of data that was talked about however not lined in full. Practically as common is using associated hyperlinks positioned on the very finish of a publish. You are able to do this manually, or you should utilize one of many many plugins on the market that may do it robotically for you.

But One other Associated Posts Plugin (YARPP) appears to be the massive favourite amongst WordPress customers. Most customers agree that it does the most effective job at robotically choosing out probably the most related posts to hyperlink to, and has the largest impression on elevated web page views.

11. Interlink Your Posts

In addition to including associated hyperlinks on the finish of a publish, one other comparable linking technique you should utilize to drive up web page views is to hyperlink to different posts or pages instantly inside the textual content of your content material. WordPress really has a characteristic that makes it simpler so that you can do that. Merely spotlight the textual content you need to hyperlink, click on the Insert/edit hyperlink button within the visible or textual content editor, and click on on Or hyperlink to current content. You may seek for a selected publish or select one from the record given.

You may also use a plugin like SmartCrawl to robotically hyperlink your posts as soon as your key phrases are configured.

Guarantee that the phrases or phrases you’re linking to are price exploring additional, and hold the hyperlinks related.

12. Use Your Sidebar to Characteristic Common Content material

Your sidebar is a invaluable piece of web site actual property, and it is best to know that. Moderately than filling it with large photographs and banner advertisements, use it to showcase the hyperlinks to your hottest content material. These posts or pages are extra common than the remaining for a purpose, and also you’ll in all probability see extra clicks on them in comparison with showcasing the newest posts in your sidebar.

WordPress Common Posts is a superb plugin that features as a widget, that you may drag into your sidebar and it conveniently lists all of the posts that get probably the most motion. You may even add thumbnails, set a time vary, customise the forms of posts you need to be proven, and use a number of variations of it in different sidebars or footer areas. As an added bonus, you’ll be capable to inform for certain whether or not they’re really driving web page views by wanting on the stats of your hottest posts that seem in your WordPress admin.

13. Create a Compelling Class Menu

It’s frequent observe to have a fundamental menu that includes all of the pages of your web site, nevertheless it’s not fairly as frequent to see classes used cleverly as a menu as properly. Your guests want as a lot assist discovering related data as they’ll get, and classes are simply the best way to do it.

There are many WordPress themes on the market that have already got class navigation constructed into them, or that help the customized menu characteristic below Look in WordPress admin, so you don’t have any excuse to not spotlight the extra particular areas that guests would possibly actually be eager about. If you need a number of menus, you’ll be able to try this text for a step-by-step walkthrough on easy methods to add extra navigation menus to your WordPress theme.

14. Use Excerpts

Excerpts are “hand-crafted summaries of your content material”. They’re typically used on pages like the house web page or weblog web page, that includes your most up-to-date posts. Along with the publish title and probably a thumbnail picture, excerpts are used to hook the customer in order that they click on via, leading to extra web page views in comparison with simply having WordPress use the primary sentence or two of your publish by default.

You will discover the excerpt characteristic beneath the publish editor field within the WordPress admin. When crafting your excerpts, attempt to describe up the publish in a manner that actually pique’s guests’ curiosity makes it irresistible to click on on. You may try this text for extra nice tips about creating higher WordPress excerpts.

Wrapping Up

These are just some of the WordPress-specific issues you’ll be able to deal with, however there actually are a seemingly infinite quantity of issues you are able to do to extend your web page views.

If you wish to discover just a few extra methods to assist enhance your web site on web site and bounce charge, try Making a Killer Dwelling Web page That Reduces Bounce Fee, Enhance time-on-site by auto-loading new posts like qz.com and Medium and The Greatest Associated Posts Plugins for WordPress.

Editor’s Notice: This publish has been up to date for accuracy and relevancy.
[Originally Published: July 2015 / Revised: March 2022]